A report from the audience: The multi-perspective Witness-Report as a Method of documenting Performance Art

Nowadays, performance art is more frequently on display and live performances are being purchased by art collections. In this context, the documentation of a contemporary performance is not just a representation of the work in the form of a video recording or a photograph. Under certain circumstances, it can serve as the basis for a renewed staging of the performance, or can provide information on the context of the performance event from a historical perspective. During the research for the Master’s thesis presented here, we investigated how one might create the most comprehensive information base documentation possible for such an event. We pursued the idea that this may be achieved by including multiple perspectives of the performance: the audience can contribute relevant information by providing reports from their perspective as witnesses to the event. By means of an experiment, we were able to show that multi-perspective witness reports are a useful form of documentation for performance art